Re: Sensors

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Derk Groeneveld wrote:

> Actually, as far as id-ing a target is concerned, almost the reverse
is
> true for 'passive radar' (ESM). A good ESM suite, supported by a
> well-filled ESM database, will give you a very solid ID of a target
based
> on the target's emissions. So perhaps sonar isn't as good an example?
In
> any case, I wouldn't be surprised if modern day passive sonar has much
the
> same capabilities?

That assumes that targets are emmitting. A target at total
EMCON will presumably be relying on totally passive sensors.
Say a vessel (in space) moving ballistically and not
thrusting. 

By relying on ESM systems you are looking at the various
fire control radars, navigation radars, long range
communications, search radar, weather scopes, data links,
Talk between ships radio, and other electronic garbage that
ships emmit. 

Further, just relying on passive sensors to recognize a
vessel will lead to funny incidents of "seeing" a harmless
tanker when in reality it is a CVA dressed up with the same
active emmissions. 

The above has happened in exercises where a very large CVN
(Nimitz class) was dressed up by the crew with all of the
correctly placed running lights and apparently masquraded as
a tanker in civil lanes in the Med. The Red force guys
waltzed right by it and didn't think to really check her
out. "Port side watch reports sighting a large tanker, very
well..." How do you loose a Nimitz Class CVN in the Med?
Very sneakily....

If a force gets very careful about how much they emit and
what they emit, they can get very "dark" to prying eyes. Add
to that in FT we're talking about using lots of whisker
lasers for close by data links, ranging data and lots of
telescopes I suspect. 

Obviously when you light some one up with beams, or fire a
missile salvo at them, you've probably just announced for
all around that you've got "a Leica Astrosystems Ranging
Laser and Hellseye Mark6 Beam Battery" or "a
GEC-Marconi-Lockheed Aerospace Mark 23 Fire control radar
and a Thiokol-British Aerospace Dynamics Lightingstrike
Salvo Missile launcher".

All of this goes out the window if you can tell the type of
plant a ship has just from its use of a captive singularity
irregardless of the drive using thrust or not. Passive
gravitometric emmissions could tell the size and probably
the field used to keep it from hitting the reactor sides and
making the ship go boom. If its just a fancy Fusion plant
with a big magnetic bottle you're going to have to get a lot
closer to tell if its a Big Merchant or a Big Warship, by
then you can probably read the hull number with your
Graflex, Inc Catadioptric Telescopes attached to your fire
control systems. This all assumes that the target at 48MU
you're looking at don't thrust at 4MU/sec/sec with enough
engine effulx for a Foch Super Carrier making it
obvious its not a 150 Mass bulk carrier). 

So I guess the question is, what kind of drives are they?
Thats the first thing. 

Second is how much passive emmissions do the ships give off?
You know something is there. How far beyond 54" do you know?
(TK drive emmissions are another thing, boy this long range
sparky stuff gets tricky...)

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- Ryan Montieth Gill	  NRA / DoD# 0780 (Smug #1) / AMA / SOHC -
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